ANGELA'S POEMS

Poetry for beginners, teachers and children

Why Rhyme?

Memory Aid

At some point we have all used rhyme to help our memory. How many of these do you recognise? -

'i' before 'e' except after 'c' A rule to help with spelling.

East increase, West get less A rule to help with Time Zones

Latitude is fatitude To help remember which is latitude and which is longitude

Thirty days have SeptemberApril, June and November.All the rest have thirty oneExcept for February alone To help in remembering the number of days in each month.

Poor old Fred confused his drinkSo now he is no moreInstead of H2O he drankH2SO4. A rhyme to help remember scientific formula

However, this is not the only reason why rhyme is important to us. It is already accepted that nursery rhymes help in the development of language, by helping children discover sound similarities, which in turn lead to the development of phoneme awareness. Psychological research has shown that both rhyme and rhythm are therefore important for reading development, and it is no co-incidence that so many children's picture books are written in rhythm and rhyme.
Cambridge University's Neuroscience department is currently researching this aspect of the way the brain works, and one of their research students (Kate Prentice) is applying the evidence showing that rhyme and rhythm affect the way the brain learns at Histon and Impington Infant school in Cambridge. As poetry naturally incorporates rhythm and rhyme, the aim is to use it to see whether it translates into improvements in reading, as research has so far suggested. For myself I am already convinced, apart from which rhyme and rhythm some how feel so much more fun!